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GoPro Issues DMCA Takedown Over Negative Review
skade88 writes "Ars is reporting that GoPro, the company that makes cameras used in extreme sports such as sky diving and swimming with dolphins has issued a DMCA take down notice on a review at DigitalRev that they do not like. See DMCA notice here. From the article: 'DigitalRev has a blog post up about the takedown, suggesting that most DMCA takedowns are "abusive" in nature. "We hope GoPro is not suggesting, with this DMCA notice, that camera reviews should be done only when they are authorized by the manufacturers," writes DigitalRev. "GoPro (or should we call you Go*ro instead?), we'd be interested to hear what you have to say" about the infringement notice.'"
Issue BS DMCA notice, get negative PR and lose millions. Maybe the system works after all... though in my vision it has a reliance on the media.
Welcome to the 21st century version of a SLAAP.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
The letter they sent completely contradicts that though. There's really nothing in that statement that aligns with the DMCA notice.
This beahviour is sadly is very typical of GoPro.
1. I bought a GoPro HD Hero a few years ago, to take video and stills on a car trip from Paris to Mongolia. We were shooting timelapse of the entire trip, to be compiled at the end.
However, when we were in the middle of Kazakhstan, one day, the camera stops working. I poke around, and see that the filenames havd gone up to DCIM_9999.jpg - and worked out that they had never engineered them to loop back to zero, so the unit had a buffer overflow, and wouldn't work.
We finally got phone access to call a friend, who saw similar threads on their forum. GP refused to acknowledge the bug - they said you had to take out the battery for at least 12 hours, and then it would work. Naturally, this didn't work. Their suggestion was: "If you believe" your unit is faulty, you can send it back to GP in the USA, but you will be liable for freight both ways, and customs import again upon reception."
I emailed them, expecting that because they put such a customer-oriented public face forward, that they'd be decent guys. They were absolutely not.
Finally, 6 months later, they released a firmwire upgrade that fixed the issue. The fix wasn't mentioned in the CHANGELOG.
2. Friend driving across the USA, his unit started recording everything in a deep magenta, for no reason, with no fix.
3. Fast forward to this year, doing an enduro motorbike race across africa. Two friends have the new GP3 cameras - which constantly bug. Out of 15 days of riding, they managed to get about 3 hours of video. The unit would power on - when switched to 'video' mode, the screen would freeze, the unit would suck down power, and empty the battery in 20 minutes. This happened on both units, on the latest firmware.
I have been constantly amazed that a company that tries to push an 'extreme' image hates their customers - and the very people that are trying to do 'extreme' stuff. You have the impression they're just guys making hardware for people doing amazing stuff, and they love what they do. This isn't at all the case, as this latest episode only goes to further illustrate.
GoPro easily produces one of the worst products I've ever had the misfortune of using. The HERO3 I received shipped with a barely working wireless feature, which a software update disabled, then a following update bricked the device. After over one month of going back and forth with technical support, they finally got around to issuing a replacement. The replacement had a bad lens. At last, I finally got one that works! But now more than two months had passed since my initial order. Alas, the video quality is poor, it can no longer be made to record 1080p wide video, and the battery gives me about 30 minutes of recording time. Their product design and engineering is laughably sloppy, and I'm eagerly awaiting the day we see some competition move in and offer decent alternatives.
Yea, I read that, except the DMCA notice listed the url for the review, not the ecommerce section.
They screwed up, then they lied about it.
So, to avoid a company with a single DMCA abuse issue, you go to a company that's name is synonymous with DMCA abuse. Sounds legit...
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
This is why I was against DMCA and am against six strikes on the ISP side because there is no penalty no matter how bullshit the claims are as long as you own the copyrights and trademarks.
You could put out a review saying "This product sucks and here is why" and the way the rules are set up now the owners of that product line could get it yanked from the web and possibly lose you your net connection depending on how many bullshit strikes you have already gotten, which if you are reviewing anything its really not hard to rack 'em up, look at how several got their YouTube channels banned for talking about a 20 year old fricking game series after Sega spammed DMCA notices to anybody that dared speak about it, and it wasn't a product they sell anymore or even bad reviews!
The entire system is tilted so damned far in favor of those with copyrights its not even funny, as TFA shows you can use DMCA to get rid of anything you don't like and there is zero penalty for filing blatantly false claims, any way you slice it that is fucked up.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I emailed them this just now: "Your use of an inappropriate and unfounded DMCA takedown notice has made my decision to purchase a new FPV camera for my R/C planes easier. It will not be a GoPro camera. Issuing a DMCA takedown notice for a bad review is childish and shows that you, as a company, have little faith in your own products if you are afraid that a negative review is going to hurt your business. I actually own a GoPro camera that I have used for a couple of years and was planning on upgrading it soon. I will NOT upgrade it to another GoPro camera as I simply cannot do business with a company with a severe lack of morals and respect for their customers." I also posted on their FB page.